| In an interview with Eric Asimov of The New York Times, the world's most sought after wine consultant, Michel Rolland, said the wine coming out of Grover Vineyards (his only project in India ) wasn't much yet, but he was proud of the progress made in the 10 years he'd been involved.
Rolland touched a number of subjects in the free-wheeling interview with the respected columnist, who noted: "In his natty blue suit, close-trimmed grey beard, carrying a sleek leather briefcase, Rolland looked ready for the boardroom rather than the vineyard, the cellar or the airport, his usual milieu."
Reacting to Jonathan Nossiter's documentary, Mondovino, which presented him as some Mephistophelean agent of globalisation, Rolland told Asimov, laughing: "In terms of business, Mondovino, it has been very positive."
He does indeed laugh a lot, though not, as his friends take pains to point out, in a sinister way, says Asimov. "Besides the fact that he's a genius, he's a lot of fun to have around," comments Andy Erickson, a winemaker who's known Rolland for 12 years and worked with him at Harlan Estate, Staglin Family Vineyards and Ovid Vineyards, an ambitious new Napa Valley estate. "He's got a way of expressing things and getting people behind him that makes everybody feel as if what they're doing is great, but maybe they can do it a little better." Elsewhere in the column, Ericson is quoted as saying: "The way he can taste the grapes and envision the way the wine is going to taste, it's something that's really learned."
Rolland's clients include "St.-Emilion luminaries like" Angelus, Ausone and Valandraud, Pape Clement in Pessac-Leognan, Pontet-Canet in Pauillac, Ornellaia in Tuscany as well as Harlan Estate, Bryant Family, Araujo and Dalla Valle in Napa. He also assists estates in Bulgaria , Greece, India and Brazil. He and his wife, Dany, who's also an oenologist and winemaker, own or have an interest in 11 wineries, from Pomerol to Spain, South Africa and Argentina.
Some Rollandisms from the interview:
- A winemaker never, never changes the character of a wine. The character comes from the grapes.
- Wine is done for what? The public! Wine is a business. They want to make wine to sell wine. In the US they are honest enough to tell you they want good ratings. They don't want loser wines.
- We have less globalisation now than we had 20 years ago. The big brands were much stronger back then. There were far fewer small producers. We aren't standardising wines. We are just doing good wines.
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